EAGLE First Flights Webinar: Taking Off with Schematic Design

Sam Sattel

Calling all new Autodesk EAGLE users and those of you new to PCB design! You’ve probably got a ton of great ideas in your head, but when it comes time to sit down and make things happen in your PCB design tool, do you know where to start? There’s an endless array of choices and discoveries to make along the way, but it all starts with your schematic design. So whether this is your first project or you’re just wanting to get up to speed with Autodesk EAGLE, we’ve got a webinar for you. Join us for our First Flights Webinar Series, where you’ll first learn to take off with a schematic design.

Remember the time

I still remember my first electronics design process fondly. I had absolutely no idea where to start, but that didn’t stop me from having some awesome ideas. My first gadget felt pretty ambitious and yet entirely overwhelming. I was tired of losing my house keys every other week, so I wanted to make an RFID smart lock. At least those things are easier to find than your keys, and I could even unlock my door with just my smartphone, I know awesome!

But back to the beginning, where was I even supposed to begin with this project? I had a decent idea on how it would all work on paper, and I had taken the time to pencil things out in a rough schematic. But the minute I opened my PCB design software, I had that classic deer in the headlights moment.

The truth is, I didn’t have a good perspective at the time on just how many steps there was in the schematic design process alone. Didn’t I just slap some parts down, wire them up, and call it a day? I soon found out that it’s way more involved than just drawing your diagram and calculating the math. I had many things going on in my mind at the time, like:

What kind of parts am I going to use, and will they even be in the libraries? If not, how do I create my own?

Is there an easier or more efficient way to be laying out my circuitry? Those ICs have so many pins!

What do I do if someone already made the schematic I need, do I need to recreate it from scratch or is there an easier way reuse technology someone else has created?

Even after working through all of this and getting all of my parts placed and wired up, doing my first design rule check was nerve racking. Was I even doing all of this right? And could I be doing it better somehow? I just didn’t have the resources I needed to feel confident about the process I was taking.

This Doesn’t Need to Be Your Experience!

Look, I get it, most of us here in the EAGLE community are self starters. We all likely began dabbling in electronics out of pure interest before even considering EE studies. But for every one person that makes it through the first-time experience gauntlet, there’s probably five others that drop out of the race early the minute they start using their software.

Creating your schematic. You’ll dive straight in, learning how to set up your first schematic project with a frame and title block. After that you’ll explore EAGLE’s free PCB libraries and start placing all of the parts you need.

Staying efficient. You’ll also learn a valuable lesson of engineering – you don’t always need to reinvent the wheel. We’ll show you how you can easily reuse existing chunks of schematic circuitry from other projects with Autodesk EAGLE’s design blocks feature.

Verifying your work. Lastly, you’ll learn the most important step of all to complete your schematic design – making sure all of your parts are properly connected together with an electrical rule check!

We’ll be hosting this live webinar on March 14th at 2pm EST. It’s only 30 minutes, so you’ll still have plenty of time for your lunch break!

Register here for our EAGLE First Flights: Taking Off with Schematic Design webinar.